On the Control of Anger (5-9)

FUNDANUS. For the first way, my friend, to dethrone temper as you would a tyrant, is not to oey or hearken when it bids us cry aloud and look fierce and beat our breasts, but to keep quiet and not intensify the passion, as we would a disease, by tossing about and making a clamour. It is quite true that lovers’ practices, such as serenading in concert or alone and crowning the beloved’s door with garlands, do in some way or other bring an alleviation that is not without charm or grace:

I came, but did not shout your name or race;

I merely kissed the door. If this be sin, Then I have sinned.[*]

So too the surrender of mourners to weeping and wailing carries away much of their grief together with their tears. But temper is the more readily fanned into flame by what people in that state do and say.

FUNDANUS. The best course, therefore, is for us to compose ourselves, or else to run away and conceal ourselves, and anchor ourselves in a calm harbour, as though we perceived a fit of epilepsy coming on,[*] so that we may not fall, or rather may not fall upon others; and we are especially likely to fall most often upon our friends. For we do not love or envy or fear everyone indiscriminately, but there is nothing that temper will not touch and assail: we grow angry with enemies and friends, with children and parents, yes, even with the gods, with wild beasts and soulless implements, as Thamyris did:

Breaking the lyre-arms, overlaid with gold, Breaking his melodious, taut-strung lyre[*];

and Pandarus, who invoked a curse on himself if he did not break with his hands [*] his bow and burn it. And Xerxes not only branded and lashed the sea,[*] but also sent a letter to Mount Athos[*]: Noble Athos, whose summit reaches heaven, do not put in the way of my deeds great stones difficult to work. Else I shall hew you down and cast you into the sea. For temper can do many terrible things, and likewise many that are ridiculous; therefore it is both the most hated and the most despised of the passions. It will be useful to consider it in both of these aspects.

FUNDANUS. As for me - whether rightly I do not know - I made this start in the treatment of my anger: I began to observe the passion in others, just as the Spartans used to observe in the Helots[*] what a thing drunkenness is. And first, as Hippocrates[*] says that the most severe disease is that in which the countenance of the sufferer is most unlike itself, so I observed that those who are transported by anger also change most in countenance, colour, gait, and voice,[*] and thus formed for myself a picture of that passion and was exceedingly uncomfortable to think that I should ever appear so terrible and deranged to my friends and my wife and daughters, not merely savage and unfamiliar to their sight, but also speaking with so harsh and rough a voice as were others of my intimate friends whom I used to meet at times when anger had made them unable to preserve their character or bearing or grace of speech or their winning and affable manners. The ease of Gaius Gracchus[*] the orator will serve as illustration. He was not only severe in his disposition, but spoke too passionately; so he caused a pitch-pipe to be made of the sort which musicians use to lead the voice up and down the scales to the proper note; with this in hand his servant used to stand behind him as he spoke and give him a decorous and gentle tone which enabled Gracchus to remit his loud cries and remove from his voice the harsh and passionate element; just as the shepherds’

Wax-joined pipe, clear sounding,

Drones a slumberous strain,[*]

so did he charm and lay to rest the rage of the orator. But as for me, if I had some attentive and clever companion, I should not be vexed if he held a mirror[*] up to me during my moments of rage, as they do for some persons after bathing, though to no useful purpose. For to see oneself in a state which nature did not intend, with one’s features all distorted, contributes in no small degree toward discrediting that passion. In fact, those who delight in pleasant fables tell us that when Athena[*] played on the pipes, she was rebuked by the satyr and would give no heed:

That look becomes you not; lay by your pipes

And take your arms and put your cheeks to rights[*];

but when she saw her face in a river, she was vexed and threw her pipes away. Yet art makes melody some consolation for unsightliness. And Marsyas,[*] it seems, by a mouthpiece and cheek-bands repressed the violence of his breath and tricked up and concealed the distortion of his face:

He fitted the fringe of his temples with gleaming gold

And his greedy mouth he fitted with thongs bound behind[*];

but anger, which puffs up and distends the face in an unbecoming way, utters a voice still more ugly and unpleasant,

Stirring the heart-strings never stirred before.[*]

For when the sea is disturbed by the winds and casts up tangle and seaweed, they say that it is being cleansed; but the intemperate, bitter, and vulgar words which temper casts forth when the soul is disturbed defile the speakers of them first of all and fill them with disrepute, the implication being that they have always had these traits inside of them and are full of them, but that their inner nature is now laid bare by their anger. Hence for a mere word, the lightest of things, as Plato[*] says, they incur the heaviest of punishments, being esteemed as hostile, slanderous, and malicious.

FUNDANUS. When I, accordingly, observe these things, and store them carefully away, it occurs to me to lay up and quite thoroughly remember for my own use that, just as it is a good thing in a fever, so it is an even better thing in anger, to keep the tongue soft and smooth. For if the tongue of men who are sick of a fever is in an unnatural state, it is a bad symptom, but not the cause of their malady; but when the tongue of angry men becomes rough and foul and breaks out in unseemly speeches, it brings forth insolence which creates irremediable enmity and argues a festering malevolence within. For unmixed wine produces nothing so intemperate and odious as anger does: words flown with wine go well with laughter and sport, but those which spring from anger are mixed with gall; and whereas the man who keeps silent at a drinking-bout is disagreeable and irksome to the company, there is nothing more dignified, if one is angry, than holding one’s peace, as Sappho[*] advises:

When anger swells within the breast,

Restrain the idly barking tongue.

FUNDANUS. But it is not these considerations only that constant watching of those who are in the grip of anger furnishes us, but also an understanding of the general nature of ill temper - that it is not well-bred, nor manly, nor possessing any quality of pride or greatness. Yet most people think its turbulence to be activity, its blustering to be confident boldness, its obstinacy force of character; and some claim that even its cruelty is magnificence in action and its implacability firmness in resolution and its moroseness hatred of evil,[*] but they are wrong in this. For the actions and the motions and the whole demeanour of angry persons declare their utter littleness and weakness, not only when they rend little children and rage bitterly against women and think it proper to punish dogs and horses and mules, as Ctesiphon the pancratiast did, who thought it right to kick back at his mule; but also in the butcheries that tyrants perpetrate, their meanness of soul is apparent in their cruelty and their perverted state in their action, and is like the bites of vipers, which, when thoroughly inflamed with rage and pain, eject their excessive fiery passion upon those who have hurt them. For just as with the flesh a swelling results from a great blow, so with the weakest souls the inclination to inflict a hurt produces a flaring up of temper as great as the soul’s infirmity is great.[*] That is also the reason why women are more prone to anger than men, and sick persons than healthy, and old men than men in their prime, and the unfortunate than the prosperous. Most prone to anger, for instance, are the miser with his steward, the glutton with his cook, the jealous man with his wife, the conceited man when he has been maligned; but worst of all are

Men who court too eagerly

Ambition in the towns:

Manifest is the pain they bring,

as Pindar[*] has it. In like manner from the pain and suffering of the soul, caused generally by weakness, there arises the outburst of passion[*] which is not, as someone[*] has said, like sinews of the soul, but like the strainings and convulsions of the soul when it is stirred too vehemently in its impulse to defend itself.

FUNDANUS. These base examples, to be sure, were not pleasant to observe, but merely unavoidable; but in discussing those who deal with transports of rage in a mild and gentle way I offer instances which are very beautiful both to hear and to witness, and I begin with a word of scorn for those who say,

It was a man you wronged: should a man bear this?[*]

and

Trample him underfoot, tread on his neck,

And bring him to the ground![*]

and other provocative expressions, by using which some err in transferring anger from the women’s quarters to the men’s. For although courage gets along well with justice in all other respects, yet, as it seems to me, it fights for the possession of gentleness alone, as belonging rather to itself. But although cases do occur in which even baser men gain the mastery over their betters, yet to erect in the soul a trophy of victory over anger (which Heracleitus[*] says it is difficult to contend against: for whatever it wishes, it buys at the price of the soul) is proof of a great and victorious strength which possesses against the passions the weapons of its judgements, as in very truth its nerves and sinews.[*]

FUNDANUS. For this reason I always strive to collect and to peruse, not only these sayings and deeds of the philosophers, who are said by fools to have no bile,[*] but even more those of kings and despots. There is, for instance, the remark of Antigonus[*] to his soldiers who were reviling him near his tent in the belief that he could not hear them: he merely thrust out his staff and cried, Good heavens! will you not go somewhere farther off to abuse me? And there is the case of Arcadion[*] the Achaean who was always railing against Philip and advising flight

Until one comes to men who know not Philip[*];

when Arcadion later visited Macedonia on some chance or other, Philip’s friends thought that he should not be let off but punished. Yet Philip, when he met him, treated him kindly and sent him friendly presents and gifts; and later bade his friends inquire how Arcadion now spoke of him to the Greeks. When all testified that the fellow had become a wonderful eulogist of the king, Philip said, Then I am a better physician than you. So in Olympia[*] when Philip was being defamed, and some persons said that the Greeks should smart for it since they spoke evil of Philip though they were being well treated by him, Philip said, What will they do, then, if they are badly treated?

FUNDANUS. Likewise admirable was the behaviour of Peisistratus[*] to Thrasybulus, and of Porsenna[*] to Mucius, and of Magas[*] to Philemon. For when Magas had been publicly ridiculed by Philemon in a comedy at the theatre:

A. For you some letters, Magas, from the king.

B. Unhappy Magas, who no letters know![*]

Magas later captured Philemon, who had been cast ashore by a storm at Paraetonium, and ordered a soldier merely to touch Philemon on the neck with a naked sword and then depart courteously; and Magas sent dice and a ball to Philemon, as to a senseless child, and sent him on his way. So also Ptolemy, when he was jeering at a pedant for his ignorance, asked him who was Peleus’ father; and the pedant replied, I shall tell you if you will first tell me who was the father of Lagus. [*] This was a jest at the dubious birth of the king, and everyone was indignant at its improper and inopportune character; but Ptolemy said, If it is not the part of a king to take a jest, neither is it to make one. But Alexander had behaved more harshly than was his custom toward Callisthenes and Cleitus.[*] And so Porus,[*] when he was taken captive, requested Alexander to treat him like a king. When Alexander asked, Is there nothing more? In the words like a king, replied Porus, there is everything. For this reason also they call the king of the gods Meilichios, or the Gentle One, while the Athenians, I believe, call him Maimactes, or the Boisterous[*]; but punishment is the work of the Furies and spirits, not of the high gods and Olympian deities.